An Adventure in Norway
by misscam
Summary: The one adventure I can never have... What if you could have it, Doctor? Have sixty years with Rose Tyler? What then? [TenRose, Others] AU. WIP
1. One

An Adventure in Norway  
by Camilla Sandman

Disclaimer: BBC's characters. My words.

Author's Note: Spoilers for "Doomsday" and set after it. Thanks to scangel for beta.

II

_Space. _

Any time.

The Doctor is thinking about adventures again.

He's had them, lived them, died by them, been regenerated into them, become them. They've formed him, and he's formed the Universe through them. A fair sort of trade, perhaps, as fair as anything in the Universe could ever be.

There's one adventure he hasn't had, can't have. He told Rose that, the Rose the Universe has taken from him as he always knew it would. That doesn't feel fair at all, not to him. Certainly not to him. Fair is giving him what he wants.

He still has the arrogance to not feel ashamed at thinking that. Still a Time Lord, even if he is the last. So many adventures, and they'll all come to silence when he dies. No remembrance for Gallifrey. No remembrance for the Doctor.

One adventure he hasn't had. Can't have, but can fake.

Rose is twenty. She might live to eighty - that is the average for her time and her kind. Sixty years of life, day by day. Long time for one single adventure. Bit longer than he's used to. He might go a little mad. Wouldn't be the first time, but might be the last. But still, he's never rushed into adventures expecting no dangers. He'll just have to think of normal life as a Dalek and duck a lot.

Sixty years.

One adventure he hasn't had.

He's always enjoyed leaving no spot undiscovered.

Maybe, maybe, maybe...

Oh, why the fuck not?

The Doctor is thinking about adventures again, and that is always, always a bad idea.

II

_London and Bergen, Norway. _

June. Year one.

Rose gets a funny feeling in her stomach one morning in June, one year on, when she reads a Norwegian news site in English. It's become a habit of hers, like having a suitcase packed and a pair of new running shoes in the closet, just in case of the impossible. There is no hope attached to it, just... No harm being prepared, like having fire drills for fires that never happen.

An English tourist has been fished out of the sea and taken to a hospital in Bergen for observation, she reads. They think he's English because of his accent, but apart from that, they're not quite sure about much at all. Apparently, he's not very communicative, and anyone who might have information is urged to contact the Bergen police department or the Norwegian embassy.

A non-communicative assumed Englishman. It could be just a tourist, but the feeling in the pit of her stomach doesn't go away. It never quite does. It's too fond of impossible hope.

It's a warm June morning, simmering with heat that even winds seem to give up at and just die away. It shouldn't be this hot even in this England, but the planet is still recovering from overheating. It takes time to cool down again, but Torchwood has several ideas on how to speed it along. It isn't really Rose's department, but she keeps an eye on it still. It's just the kind of thing that would go wrong if the Doctor was here, and would have a little adventure sorting out. She is prepared to have a little adventure sorting it out herself. Defending the Earth and all. It's a hard habit to kick.

"You all right, love?" Jackie calls in from the kitchen. Rose hardly looks up, eyes still glued to the screen. "You're going to be late."

"Mum, I am the boss. I decide what late is now. You look after Graham. Don't worry about me."

"You're still my daughter, you know," Jackie says, sounding a little insulted, but already moving away. The latest addition to the Tyler family is often impatient and loud and demanding, and Rose knows her mother is secretly thrilled by all of it. Not just because it's the bond to the Pete Tyler of this world Rose isn't, but also because Rose hasn't quite returned to her. She can't, even if she wants to.

She isn't quite that Rose Tyler any more.

She sits and stares at the screen for a while, before making a call to a friend in the Norwegian Special Disturbance Unit (or Norsk Spesial Uro Enhet, which she can never wrap her tongue around), who officially doesn't know Torchwood exists, just like she doesn't officially know about it or the French Department for Alien Aliens (as it more or less translates to) or the US Bureau for Space Threats or all the politics in-between. She hates politics. That's why she has friends instead. Friends who can find out when a tourist is just a tourist, or when he's a stranger.

She almost hopes he's a tourist. That won't allow any speculation.

"Your tea is cold," Pete says behind her, and hands her a new mug, and she wonders if it's his or a new one he's made for her and which one would delight her the most. He looks a little guarded, but he always does, and it almost doesn't hurt any more. "Will you be making another trip to Norway soon?"

"Maybe. I have to know."

"You always do."

"Don't tell mum."

He laughs a little, but without any real humour. "She'd have my head if I did for not stopping you. When you come back, you're always... She can tell, you know. She is your mum."

"I know," she says quietly. "Thanks for helping her."

"I love her," he says sharply and abruptly, and walks away. Pete loves Jackie and Jackie loves Rose, and as family goes, it sort of works.

Even so, she lets the mug of tea stand untouched until it too is cold, and she can hear the distant sounds of Jackie making noises to her son and Pete joining in. Only then does she leave quietly, taking her laptop with her.

She drives to work in the heat, and thinks about getting her own place again. She always does, and Jackie always talks her out of it, playing on the bit of guilt Rose still feels for going with the Doctor in the first place. It isn't playing fair, but fairness is for those who can afford it, as Mickey puts it.

Fighting Cybermen for years can change anyone's perception of fair. Can change anyone, and has certainly changed Mickey. She appreciates it. She admires it. A few years back, she would've fallen madly for it.

A few years ago, her heart hadn't been ripped out of her chest and left in an alternate universe. It'll heal, is healing, but Mickey reminds her and Mickey doesn't want to be second best, settled for, and Mickey, Mickey has other ideas.

She doesn't quite understand why he likes Paris so much, though.

Traffic is light, perhaps because most are on holiday and following the World Cup. In her world, it would be football, in this it is ballkick, a fairly similar sport, only it also involves the use of tennis rackets. Pete owns his own team, and she's let him take her to games if only to feel something like a fatherly connection.

It's been a strange year. She's almost become used to it, even to the fake calls and the resulting heartbreak. They're expected, routine, part of her new life.

She's beginning to understand Sarah Jane a lot more, and she can't even take her up on the offer of contact. The Sarah Jane of this world is married and runs The London Gazette, and probably thinks Rose Tyler rather mad from the encounter they had. This Sarah Jane doesn't understand.

Rose is longing for someone who does. Mickey gets parts of it, Jackie gets other parts and even Pete some, but no one understands everything. Just her, and that is kind of lonely.

She's just reached the underground car park when her phone calls, and she answers it with all the indifferent air she can imagine.

"Tyler."

"He's a stranger. Definitely alien," Petter tells her without any preamble. "You coming up to have a look?"

"Yes," she says, no hesitation. "I'm coming up. I'll bring you a treat."

"See you then, Tyler," the Norwegian replies, and hangs up. She stares at the phone for a moment, feeling something almost like anger. Why couldn't it be just a tourist? Why did it have to be hope again?

Still, time to go to Norway once more and have hopes dashed and heart broken. Routine.

Even so, she has a funny feeling in her stomach, and it's not going away.

II

Rose arrives in Bergen on July 27th, embarking from her zeppelin with the same headache she always gets. Maybe she shouldn't attempt reading briefs while in transit, but her desk is full of them and the pile never seems to shrink. Sometimes, she's half tempted to just torch the thing, as if there can be no more paperwork without a desk to put it on. She can work without a desk. She certainly has before.

Petter greets her, and is properly appreciative of her treat, as he tends to be. Torchwood has more resources than his little unit, which faces trouble all the same. Perhaps because his country is where the breach between dimensions last closed, a lot of trouble seems to be attracted there.

He's going to offer her a job again, she has a feeling.

"You sure he's alien?" she asks as they drive through traffic, sun bouncing off the car and back into space.

"I wouldn't bring you up here if we didn't. We did some tests and scans. He's got two hearts."

"What?" she says sharply, and the second before he replies again is all pain.

"Two hearts. Definitely alien. You wouldn't believe what we found in his blood..."

"I would," she replies, digging nails into her palms. "Has he spoken at all?"

"Just mutterings about falling through hell. He's a bit insane, I should warn you."

"Oh, I bet he is," she laughs, and wants to cry. It has to be. It can't be. It has to be. It can't be. Might be other Time Lords in this world. Might be a whole Universe full of them.

Might not be. Might be him.

Hope hurts.

It feels like an eternity and probably is one before Petter pulls over in front of the hospital, and she wonders why they haven't closed the whole area off. But then, Norwegians are different and have different ideas about secrecy and public access and their Prime Minister even has a Cyberman's head in his office. Hunting trophy, allegedly. She'd believe that better if it hadn't been a head she'd brought as a treat.

She might need bigger treats to trade if this truly is the Doctor.

It can't be.

It has to be.

It can't be.

It has to be.

It is.

II

The Doctor is dreaming about hell again. Falling through it, screaming in it, navigating through it. So much hell and so little him and just one anchor to where he's going.

Rose.

He's going to have an adventure with Rose.

The void is an adventure too, but he can't say he likes it. Doesn't like death, and it's full of it, Cybermen and Daleks at eternal war, only pausing to hunt him.

And there are other things, shadows and whispers and nightmares, and he screams quite a lot all the way through his fall.

So little him and so much void and he falls and falls and falls out and the water is cold and he misses the TARDIS, but the TARDIS would die here and he's parked it on the other side so it can live till he returns.

He dreams a lot about how lonely he is without it still. Muddled memories without her, muddled sense of self too. So much hurt, clouding everything.

He also dreams about Rose. Rose, Rose, who should smile and looks angry instead.

"You complete bastard," she says, and he wonders why dreams need to be rude. "I was growing used to false hope. I made a life of it, a stupid, silly, worthwhile life without you. How dare you change it? How dare you come back now? You're such a fucking wanker I could kiss you."

"He slips in and out of consciousness," a doctor-y voice says, and he feels a bit upstaged. He's supposed to be the one with the answers, but right now he can't even think of many questions. "Been like that since we found him. You ask me, he's had a nasty shock."

"Good," Rose says harshly. "Then he'll know how I feel."

But her hand is very soft stroking his and he thinks she's a little bit happy still. He likes her happy. He's going to make her happy again. He remembers that.

"Rose Tyler," he says, and everyone looks at him with surprise. "Marry me for sixty years?"

His last thought before slipping into nightmares again is that if they all look at him as if he's rather loony, he rather has to be too.

Yeah.

That feels about right.

II

It is nighttime when he wakes again, he knows instinctively, even if streams of sunlight are crawling across the floor. He knows time, he knows, a sort of instinct in his mind. If he focuses on it, he can almost feel something between the tick of seconds, like a stream he can tap into.

He balls his hand a little and wonders if he could hold time in his hand. Somehow, he thinks it would tickle.

He looks up to see a shadow in the window on the other side of his room, back to him. Rose, he knows. Rose Tyler.

He's beginning to think he knows a lot of things.

"You've had some head trauma," Rose says tonelessly, and he wishes he could see her face. "You might have some memory loss, at least the specialist here thinks so. But he's never treated a Time Lord before, so you might surprise him."

"You're Rose," he says, and she inhales sharply. "I'm the Doctor."

"Yes."

"I came to find you."

"Got that impression, yeah. With the marriage proposal and all."

She doesn't sound overjoyed with, well, joy, he notes. She sighs, and finally turns to look at him, and he can see the tears clinging to her lashes.

"I thought I'd never see you again," she whispers, desperation clinging to every word. "So how can you be here?"

"I fell," he replies, and remembers. It's enough to make him wince, and she is by his side in seconds, grabbing his hand anxiously. "I landed. Hurt a bit. Service on dimensional travel really is _terrible._"

"Oh, shut up," she says, but he remembers that tone and beams at it. She just shakes her head at him, and then she is kissing him harshly, a sort of punishment and reassurance that he's real also. He lets her, and wonders why her kiss feels so familiar.

"If you're here to say goodbye or some such shit and leave me again, I'm going to kill you," she whispers against his lips, and the bitterness he hears in her voice he's pretty sure isn't familiar at all. She's changed. Perhaps he has too. He can't quite remember, but there is a sense that he's used to change. Very used to it.

"I'm here to stay for sixty years," he says, which must be true, because he can't remember how to lie right now.

"Sixty years? What happens after sixty years?"

"You die."

Her eyes widen a little, then she just kisses him again, as if she can't think of any words at all. He responds a little this time, because it feels rude not to, and quite good to. Her lips taste of sun, and her breath of coffee, and he knows she hasn't slept while he has. Herkeeps his eyes open and watches hers close, lashes dark against pale skin.

"You need to sleep," he says to her, and she lowers her head to the pillow next to his, even if that mean she's craning her neck in a way that looks uncomfortable. He doesn't like that, doesn't like her hurting at all, so he yanks her fully up into the bed. She doesn't protest, just curls herself up against him. It's a little unfamiliar, but comfortable, so he puts his arms around her and feels a bit adventurous.

"Kept thinking if I slept, I'd wake up too, and this would be another dream," she mutters, voice thick.

"Do I feel like one?"

"Yeah. You didn't usually ask me to marry you as a way of greeting."

"It's a very friendly way of saying hi."

"And divorce a very unfriendly way of saying goodbye, I suppose," she replies softly, eyes still closed. A heartbeat passes, and she sighs. "I missed you."

"Quite right, too," he agrees. "Rose?"

"Mmmm?"

"I am a complete bastard, aren't I?"

"Yes," she says effortlessly, but smiles a little.

"Thought so."

"I still love you."

"Thought so again," he replies, because it isn't very hard to tell. He just has to look at her, and he knows, even with fuzzy memories, confused emotions and a pounding headache.

"Think less, shut up more."

"Okay," he readily agrees, even if he seems quite fond of talking. That can wait till later. He's got sixty years now to talk to her. That should be plenty. Might even be overkill. Might run out of things to say.

Nah. That'll never happen with him.

She sleeps, and he watches her, and somehow, that feels rather familiar too, like something returned to him. Rose Tyler, his.

Yeah.

That feels about right.

II

It rains on July 29th, and Rose finally dares leaving the Doctor's side to go find Petter. She feels heavy as she walks, as if a burden has been laid on her rather than lifted from her, and all the pain of losing him seems to have been relived in getting him back. Strange, that.

But it is him. Her Doctor. He mutters enough of the past that she knows no one else would know, and his hand is his hand. She can't mistake that. He is her Doctor, and now she has to stake her claim.

"He's mine," she tells Petter, marching into his office and planting her hands on his desk. He looks like he's been expecting her. He probably has been every hour since they moved the Doctor from the hospital and into the smaller building of Petter's unit, but she's been putting it off, spending so many hours just assuring herself the Doctor isn't a dream.

"Old friend?" Petter asks, crossing his arms. He looks like he hasn't slept much either, his blond hair rather ruffled and shirt crumpled. Overworked is not just a British phenomena, it seems.

"You could say that."

"He is alien, and technically under our jurisdiction. But there is a way he could be released into your care."

She sighs. Everything costs in this world. There's always a price to be paid when you can't just leave any time before the check arrives. "Which is?"

"You work for us. Your friend isn't the only one who landed on that beach. There is something killing my people. Stop it, and your friend won't have any troubles with us." He looks at her, blue eyes apologetic. "I'm desperate, Tyler."

"Didn't take long for trouble to follow him," she mutters, and remembers she always thought the Doctor was worth the monsters. He'll have to be again. "All right, Petter. I'll stop it."

He nods slowly, looking relieved and a little ashamed too. Perhaps at having to bargain for help. Unasked for, it's always easier to accept. "I'll get you an office and all the information we have. Maybe you can find a weak spot we haven't."

"Yeah," she mutters, feeling drained of energy and just wanting to crawl back into bed and listen to the Doctor breathe. "I'll need some tea. The Doctor will want some too."

She walks out, and leans against the wall in the hallway, hardly noticing the people moving around her. Her fingers feel stiff as she finds her cell phone, and feels only a little guilty at all the missed calls. She wasn't quite ready to take them yet.

Pete answers on the third ring, voice anxious. "Rose?"

"Dad," she whispers, even if she knows he feels uncomfortable when she does and she's tried so very hard to do what he wants. But right now, she needs him to be her dad. "It's him."

"What?"

"It's the Doctor," she says, and her voice sounds hysterical even to her. "Dad, it's him. Don't tell anyone else yet."

He breathes, and she listens to it, something ordinary and reassuring. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," she says, and and a strange calm falls over her. She is sure. The Doctor has come back to her. He's swept into her life again like the whirlwind he's always been, and it's all she can do to hang on. Everything else is everything else. "Yeah, I'm sure."

II

Somewhere in the third file on mysterious going-ons near Bergen, she falls asleep and dreams of people dying, people screaming and sharp, metallic voices shrieking in rage. It's a familiar dream, but it's been a while since she had it in this world.

She awakes sharply to see the Doctor looking at her from the doorway. Her neck aches, as it always does when she falls asleep at a desk, and her mouth tastes of paper and dust. She isn't sure what time it is, but the dark sky she can see from the window tells her it has to be one of the few hours of the night when there is no sun.

The Doctor is looking so much like himself that her heart skips a beat. Suit back on, not the hospital gear she's grown a bit used to. His hair is sticking everywhere, but his smile is full of energy.

"How did you get out of...?" she starts, and he waves his sonic screwdriver at her. "Ah."

"You said you'd be right back. Everyone there kept poking me when you're not there," he says, slightly accusing. She makes a grimace. "All work, no play, Rose Tyler?"

"You want to play?"

"I love to play!" he beams. "I think I do. Don't I?"

She can't help but smile, and he seems to take that as confirmation enough. Walking into the room, he picks up a few papers and looks at them, a frown forming on his forehead.

"I don't understand this," he says, and she knows then he's left the TARDIS behind. "I'm meant to... Oh. The TARDIS. Not here."

"Yeah," she agrees. "Was a bit of a bother having to learn languages again. Norwegian can be a right bugger to master. So how did you get here?"

He seems to look beyond her. "I made a hole. I fell. I landed. Does it matter, Rose?"

"It matters if something fell with you," she says tiredly. "Something's killing people near the beach where I last saw you. Judging by all this... I think it's a Dalek."

His smile falls. His eyes narrow, and she remembers he was always a fighter too, just using people as his weapons when he had to.

"I hate Daleks," he says after a moment. "So rude, never stopping to see the sights on their genocidal killing sprees."

She nods, and then she can't stand it anymore, getting up and walking to him until his arms are warm and safe and reassuring around her. He puts a warm hand on her neck, pressing his head into her shoulder, his breath hot even through her shirt.

"Rose," he murmurs a little brokenly, and she knows he's missed her too and she hurts a little for him and with him.

"I'm here," she assures him, and herself too. "You found me."

"How long has it been for you?"

"Bit over a year. You?"

He breathes a little, perhaps trying to remember. "Not that long. Had a bit of a bride situation to sort out."

Might explain what triggered the random proposal, she figures, but decides not to ask at all. Without explanations from him, it can just be what it is and nothing more. And either way, he's come here, without the TARDIS and with only himself. That's enough.

"Did you..." he trails off. "I mean, is there anyone in your life that..."

Her phone rings, and the Doctor must feel her tense, for he reaches into her pocket before she can and fishes it out.

"Rose Tyler's phone," he says professionally, and she puts her head on his chest as he talks, listening to the words rumble. "Oh, Jackie! Jackie, Jackie, Jackie, how I haven't missed your voice at all."

He winces a bit as the reply from the other end reaches him, and pulls the phone slightly away from his ear. "Your mum still loves me like her own, doesn't she? I can tell."

She plucks the phone from him with a slight head shake, but can't quite manage to make it stern. "Mum, calm down. Yeah, he's here. I'll explain later. Yeah, I promise. Yeah. Yeah... Love you too, mum."

"Love you too, Rose," the Doctor says as she hangs up, a slight mimic of Jackie's voice, the tone just a little too forced casual. She lets that mean what she wants it to.

"Quite right too," she says briskly, kissing him hard until he's breathless and she's feeling a little in control. "Want to help me sort out a Dalek?"

"Thought you'd never ask, Rose Tyler," he replies, eyes so very bright when looking at her.

II

Summer is the season of midnight sun in Norway, the Doctor learns, when the sun rises early and sets late, and in some parts, never leaves the sky at all. It's a little unsettling at first, and explains why he's on a hill with Rose Tyler in almost daylight during almost midnight, looking down at a Dalek that looks almost like a shadow with all the light around it.

"Petter's guys have been avoiding provoking it," Rose says in a low voice. "It's killed anyone who's come near, but it appears to be a little confused and dazed still."

"Know how it feels," he replies lightly, and feels quite dark. Even here, the Daleks come. They never die, and for once, he'd quite like some death. "I think I'll go have a chat."

"What?" Rose says, and the Norwegian friend she has looks at him like he's completely bonkers. Which he is, but he's not going to take that from some silly human.

"You want to talk to a - what was it? Dalek?"

"Yep!" he replies, and Rose just looks at him, eyes dark and angry.

"It's killed everyone who's approached it!" the Norwegian protests. "We had to do all our scanning from a distance and evacuate tourists from the area."

"Oh, we go ways back, me and the Daleks," the Doctor reassures him. "It's come all this way to say hello, how can I deny it? Be rude and inhospitable, and isn't this supposed to be a friendly country?"

"You're not going to dare getting yourself killed, are you?" Rose breaks in, wind ripping at her hair. He steadies it without thinking, letting a hand stay on her cheek.

"After I've come all this way? Hardly," he replies, and knows he's remembered how to lie. "Be back before you've had time to miss me."

He feels her gaze on his back all the way as he walks down down, the stare of the black Dalek on his front as he approaches. It isn't killing him on sight, as he's gambled on, looking like it's thinking instead. Waves are crashing in the distance, but almost lazily, like the sea is waiting for something too.

"Hello!" he says cheerfully when he is close enough. "Come to see the midnight sun? Or the fjords? Take a little postcard with you back to hell?"

"You-are-the-Doc-tor," the Dalek says, voice like destruction, as always. "You-will-free-the-Da-leks-from-the-void."

"What, not enjoying the stay in hell?" he asks, grinning a little madly. "That's a shame. I so enjoyed sending you there."

"You-will-obey."

"I will not," he says cheerfully. "Free will is such a _pain_, isn't it?"

"You-will-obey-or-die! You-will-obey-or-everyone-will-be-ex-termi-nated!"

"Oh, I think not," he says casually. "See, this world has Rose Tyler now. And she's..."

He lifts his gaze and trails off for a moment, looking a bit perplexed. "... standing behind you with a very large gun, in fact."

"Duck, you idiot!" Rose calls, and he does. There is what sounds like a very loud bang, and his vision turns terribly white. He can only vaguely make out some shadows, and one looming stronger and stronger until he can make out the Dalek again, it's head-piece blown open, and the eyestalk half turned towards Rose. There is a rather sickening smell of burning flesh, and he wipes his nose a little as he fights back onto his feet.

The whiff of dead Dalek is never going to be a hit perfume, he reckons.

Rose is looking at him, her weapon lowered, but none of the tension gone from her stance.

"You haven't befriended someone calling herself 'Ace' here, have you?" he asks suspiciously.

She shakes her head. "Mickey made it. Said he wouldn't put it past you to come crashing back into our lives with company, Dalek or otherwise. I always bring his little helpers when I come here. Just in case. Mickey's real smart, you know. He's made me one especially for Cybermen too."

"Mickey the hero," he says, and actually means it.

"Doctor the idiot," she shoots back. "You were going to play distraction or die trying, weren't you?"

He scratches the base of his neck slightly. "Wasn't a plan, as such. Just... It was my fault it came here."

"Maybe. Maybe it would've fallen in anyway. But you're not going to break my heart just because you're a thoughtless bastard of a Time Lord with delusions of self-sacrifice." She pauses slightly. "Thanks for ducking."

"You're welcome," he says, feeling a little dazed still. In the distance, he can already hear the running steps of the approaching Norwegians, but he keeps his eyes at Rose. "I don't have a time machine to invite you into this time."

"I have a car," she counters. "Well, I'm going to have one as soon as I ask for it."

He makes a slightly sceptical face.

"Did I mention it travels on roads? Away from poking people? It might go anywhere."

He grins, and she grins and he thinks maybe it'll turn out to be okay after all. He can have this adventure with her, a little life day by day. It'll work. It'll do better than work. "Anywhere sounds brilliant."

He was always a master at anywhere, he thinks.

(To be continued.)


	2. Two

An Adventure in Norway  
by Camilla Sandman

Disclaimer: BBC's characters. My words. Norway belongs to itself.

**Two**

II

_Norway._

August. Year one.

The Doctor has tried many machines, and the TARDIS is still the one in his heart, but he has to admit feeling the wind in his hair, a car window open, and watching the horizon never come any closer has a certain charm to it still. He can see why humans might enjoy it, never having seen horizons be born and die within a day and feel stars in their hair.

Rose is driving, and he is feeling a little bothered being the passenger, but he tries not to let it show. She can probably still tell, he figures. Or at least he'd like her to tell so she can take pity on him eventually and let him drive.

He's not sure where they're going, but he knows it's not to London and her life. If that's for her sake or his, he's not sure. He's fairly sure he's not quite ready for Jackie Tyler yet, though. She probably has a speech prepared for him by now.

He did keep his promise, he reminds himself. That's important.

The sun is being filtered through trees as they drive, pine and spruce and the occasional leaf tree. He leans back a little, watching the sky and wondering if all the stars in this universe are the same as in his. He feels a bit of an urge to find out, but reminds himself there's plenty of time.

Might have to raid Torchwood a bit to find ways of travelling. Might be fun. Might lure Rose along, too.

"You look like mischief," Rose says over the roar of the engine. She does too, he thinks, twinkling eyes and bright smiles. "What are you up to?"

"What are you up to?" he counters. "Whisking me out of Norwegian government buildings in the middle of the night, refusing to say where we're going..."

"Thought it best they didn't know," she answers honestly, and for a moment she does look worried about something. She doesn't say what, but he feels confident he'll lure it out of her sooner or later. "Don't know where we're going, besides. Somewhere I can get used to you again."

"I'm an acquired taste?"

"Overwhelming taste, sometimes."

He reflects on that a bit, sucking slightly on a finger. He doesn't find the taste that overwhelming, really. Maybe he should ask Rose to try. 

The air smells of coming rain, grass and trees, and he remembers the last time he was stranded on an Earth and had to get used to actually minding the weather. It feels distant now, many bodies ago, and even more companions ago. Jo, who left him, and Sarah Jane, who he left and so many after, all the way to Rose.

The car pulls over to the side, and he sees it's some sort of stopping place for those wanting, benches and tables about for people to eat at. There's a lake in the distance, glimmering peacefully, and there's Rose, looking at him a little hesitantly.

"You are feeling all right, aren't you? Memories all back? No dizzy spells? Nausea?"

"Yes, think so, no and no. I also still have all my hair, and none of my teeth have fallen out."

She gives him a wiltering stare. "There could be all kinds of aftereffects. You went through the void, through 'hell'..."

"Yes, and I'm out. End of story, full stop after the last word of a sentence, final tone to a Beethoven masterpiece. Did you pack any food?"

She sighs, but reaches into the backseat anyway. "What do you prefer, sandwich with salami or ham?"

II

Rose had forgotten how annoying secrets kept from her could be, but she's remembering now, watching the Doctor very carefully finding out that he does in fact prefer salami. He goes about it with the same amount of energy he does most things, looking utterly dedicated, and yet she knows he's thinking about a million other things as well as they sit on a bench in little Norway, the Universe so very distant.

He does seem the same, but she can't help but worry. Worry about how he'll manage, worry about pains he might hide from her, worry about people who might want his knowledge. No TARDIS to run away in. She had never realised how much safety was in that.

"Are you used to me yet?" he asks suddenly, gaze very earnest and smile very wicked.

"I think you take a lifetime to get used to," she replies honestly. "It's a little weird... I thought about you so often, what you were doing, and it was almost like you lived in my mind only."

"Life-by-Rose-thought. Not a bad life, I reckon. Did I have fun?"

"Oodles."

"I like oodles. Makes a funny noise when you say it. Ooo-oooodles."

She watches him pucker his lips, and really, that is too much even for the most restrained person and she's never been that. So she just has to gently pluck the sandwich from his hands and place herself on his lap. He goes a bit still, but doesn't pull away.

"Say it again," she orders.

"Oodles?"

She kisses him at the end of the word, his lips already parted and his tongue tasting of the expected salami, sharp and spicy. He moves a little against her, his hair tickling her forehead and his hands settling on her hips. She is much more active, fumbling her fingers through his hair, tugging a little at his tie (a moose-patterned one she had got him, since he has to start his wardrobe collection all over), exploring his mouth until it feels like familiar territory. She doesn't even mind the first drops of rain she can feel falling into her hair and on her skin.

"Rose," he mutters, his teeth scraping against her bottom lip.

"Mmmm?"

"Is there anyone in your life that..."

"Yeah," she says firmly, and his face falls a little. "There's you."

He grins, and the sky opens, dumping water on trees and humans and Time Lords indiscriminately, drumming as it falls. She laughs as he grabs her hand and they run to the car, the food left behind to the elements and time, almost forgotten. 

There's just the hint of salami still on his lips that she licks the taste of, his body pressing hers against the car and the rain suddenly not important at all.

II

Rose shags the Doctor in a wooden cabin, the rain drumming against the roof and branches of pine trees lashing against the walls and windows in the wind. They've rented it, the Norwegian lady running the place that has about twenty of the sort for accommodation obviously thinking they're tourists. Perhaps they are, in this place and in this time, visiting normality.

Wet clothes get discarded and left on the floor, skin touched and kissed and even bruised a little when bumped into hard surfaces, and somehow, they end up in a closet and not in the bed. She half suspects him of being contrary just for the sake of it, but she doesn't really care when his mouth is warm against a breast, and his fingers are making her buck and whimper in the same breath.

He talks a lot of nonsense about body temperatures and wool socks that she can't really focus on, and has no idea why he is, but maybe he just likes to let his mouth run free, and when he lets it roam free across her body, she does think she might be in favour. He only goes really silent after his first thrust into her, and he pauses, her body adjusting to the unfamiliar hardness and trying to get comfortable with a shelf at her back.

He watches her face, and his own is so still that she almost thinks time has frozen around them and is just holding, like an embrace. She can't quite read from his expression how he feels, and she longs to so badly she lifts and a hand and touches his temple.

He smiles faintly, as if he knows, and leans down and kisses her. She runs her hands down his back as he moves, retracting and thrusting, leaving her aching until he changes his angle slightly and she has no breath to tell him it's definitely good. He seems to get it anyway, and she digs her nails into his flesh and almost wails into his mouth as he keeps at it, torture and pleasure meeting in a moment slamming into her and sweeping away everything else.

"Rose," he says softly, coaxing her back and she feels a strange sense of loss as the moment slips and time moves on. It'll never be the first time with him again. It's lost now. Everything is lost, and she lost him too.

Not again, she vows, pressing a kiss against the pulse in his neck and feeling his body tense slightly as she moves. His time for torture now, she decides, and grins.

Yeah. Oodles of it. 

Outside, the rain dies away, and there's just the stillness after.

II

The Doctor sits and watches the sun rise, way before morning is due. It's stopped raining, and the clouds have parted a little, enough to let him watch the display of light across sky. It's hard to just sit calmly and not rush off to compare it to other skies and other sunrises, but it is pretty in its own way and he likes watching.

Rose is sleeping, as humans like to, and he's slipped out without waking her. Plenty of time after all, and he can feel that almost to the point of panic.

Time is a lot less overwhelming when you can skip the boring parts and fast forward to anything interesting.

He'll just have to label everything potentially interesting, he decides. Like this forest, and this morning, and how quiet it can be with all the noises of nature around him. 

He tilts his head slightly as a moose comes barrelling out of the forest, and pauses at the sight of him.

"Hello!" he says cheerfully. "Out on a late night without your plus one? Certainly looks like it. Maybe you sent me vibes and lured me out here to follow your example. They do say 'when in Norway, do as the moose'."

He thinks a bit. "Who are these 'they', do you know? I've never met a 'they'. Would like to. I'd have a lot of questions for them about what they say."

The moose doesn't have a lot to contribute on that, just staring and ever so carefully talking a step westwards. It looks rather distrusting, really, but with humans around, who wouldn't be? They have a habit of shagging you one day and yelling at you the next, he reflects.

Not that he'd know. Too well, anyway. He suspects he's in for a lot of learning,

"Have a good morning, then!" he calls after the moose trodding away, and gives it a little wave. 

"Chatting up moose already?" Rose asks, and he turns to see her leaning against a tree, arms folded and hair a horrid mess. He quite likes it.

"It was walking up me, the horrid flirt," he replies, leaving the stone he's called chair for a good hour to walk over. He halts a step away, not quite sure what post-shag protocol indicates these days. Snog? Hug? Friendly handshake? Shakespeare sonnet?

She solves it by kissing him, soft and slowly, seeming to delight in it, and that is rather nice.

"Did I snore and drive you out of bed?" she asks, buttoning his shirt up. He hadn't really noticed that he hadn't until now.

"Nah."

"Did I...?" she trails off as he shakes his head, because it's really not about her.

"It's so silent," he whispers quietly. "I forgot how silent it is without her."

"The TARDIS?" She doesn't wait for his confirmation, probably doesn't need it. "Take you to see mum, you'll soon be pleading for silence. She had her baby, you know. Graham Tyler. My brother. Half-brother. Sort of. Something like that. It's a little confusing."

"Yeah," he agrees, not having the heart to tell her she can't really substitute his lack of family with hers. "Do you want to go home, then?"

"It's not home. It's just a place I live. We don't have to go there at all."

They will sooner or later, he knows. If only because he'll need Torchwood and Rose will need something beyond him, even if she pretends she doesn't. But no rush. He has to learn this taking-it-slow thing sooner or later, after all.

He has a funny feeling it involves a lot of knitting.

"Let's just go where we want to," he says, and they do.

II

They travel.

They drive across Jotunheimen, a rugged mountain range that feels windswept and almost barren, reminding the Doctor of a planet long since dust, and dust long since forgotten. No two places of the Universe are the same, but there's always an echo somewhere. There's an echo of Gallifrey somewhere between the darkness of space and the burn of stars, and he fears hearing it.

Some reminders are best avoided.

They watch mountains, sometimes in silence, sometimes in talk. He insults tourists by being his friendly self, and delights in the insults they throw at him. There's some he hasn't heard in _years_, and humans are so delightfully eager in trying to cause offense. It's really quite endearing, even if Rose just looks at him like he's bonkers when he tells her.

He rides a reindeer, just because, finding it nothing like riding a camel at all but still fun; and Rose rides him, just because, nothing like gentle at all but still pleasure. There's something rough and dark between them too, he discovers, and wonders if it comes from him or her or both.

She smiles at him a lot, and he turns her phone off a lot when she isn't looking. It's better that way, he's firmly convinced, so she won't have to look guilty for not answering and he doesn't have to make her forget after.

He was always better at pretending it never happened at all.

They sleep under open sky, they sleep in the car, and they don't sleep at all, sitting on the hood of the car as the sun rises and he tells her about two suns colliding and all the beauty in destruction of the Universe's making. He thinks about not being able to take her, he knows she thinks about what it would've been like to see, and neither say anything.

Sunlight feels pale in the early hours of the morning, he finds, and Rose's kiss tastes of desperation.

They shag when they feel like it, and don't when they don't. He learns how she likes it, and is an appallingly bad teacher for her. He's not even sure what he likes himself yet, body relatively new and still in original wrapping. Humans have such human ideas about sex anyway, and Time Lords have a lot of ideas about everything else.

He discounts a career in sex ed, but finds experimentation much to his liking.

They go skinny-dipping in a river because a lake is too normal, only it's more like skinny-crawling-in-water due to the lack of depth. It's still cold and silly and mostly embarassing, all the things a skinny-dip should be.

He crosses it off his mental 'Things Humans Do in Life' list and adds two new ones after Rose's grumbling - visiting a sauna and going to a nudist beach. He has a good feeling about not running out of things to do.

He has a bad feeling about running into things he has to do.

She takes him shopping in a small town along the way, getting shirts and ties for variation and detergents for laundry. He suspects it's a clue she won't be doing it for him, so he thinks about being nice to Jackie.

Well, it's an option, anyway.

Rose lets him drive after a while, and he soon finds Norwegian traffic rules about as restrictive as any the High Council of Gallifrey might come up with. He almost suspects one has imitated the other, and is not really sure which would be which. At least one of them doesn't know about slightly psychic paper, and he makes good use of it talking his way out of tickets.

He doesn't show Rose what else he's brought with him, and hopes he won't have much use for those items at all. 

They linger around Trondheim, a sizable city by Norwegian standards on a tiny planet by his, and he walks among people and tries to feel one of them. It's hard when they're so small and he can see their lives stretch ahead of them, like the wick to a small candle, already burning.

He tries not to look at Rose, and he's sure she can taste the desperation in his kiss.

They go to Hell, and run into trouble.

II

Hell is a real place, Rose discovers, with its own train station and everything. Of course, the word doesn't mean the same in Norwegian and it's Hell, Norway, not 'Hell, see Void, the', but it still feels like a bad omen from the moment she sees the road sign and realises what the place is called.

She tries not to remember the Beast, which did end up being right, after a fashion.

What the Doctor remembers, she doesn't know, because he starts making cheerful jokes and it's a hard shield to penetrate.

"I'm serious!" he insists, tapping the 'welcome to Hell' sign with his knuckles. "Humans do find a planet shaped like a certain painful poking instrument and name it after the place where any day is pitchfork day."

She rolls her eyes at him from the car, reminding herself to have a talk with him about sudden and unexpected exits, and not just from cars. "That's impossible."

"Yeah, you're right," he agrees. "It's actually a moon."

"I'm sure..." she starts, and forgets what she's about to say when there is a short, painful scream, and there's only one sort of possible reaction to that when she's with the Doctor.

They run towards it, her a little behind as she has to exit the car first, but at full sprint she's almost by his side when they turn a corner and find the source. It really can't be anything else with so many people looking so forced casual.

"So what's the trouble here, then?" the Doctor says without even pausing for breath. "Doctor John Smith, scientific advisor on random, desperate screaming."

He waves the psychic paper a little, even at her, so she has time to see she's Rose Tyler, advisor to scientific advisor, getting a lot more shagging than Miss Moneypenny by his thinking, and she's not quite sure if she should ask him how he's figured that.

"No trouble here," a man answers, his English slow and with the odd tilt Norwegians seem to have.

"Oh, come _on_," the Doctor urges, a look of disappointment on his face. "Not even a little troublette?"

The people exchange looks, and finally a young by steps forwards, pointing further up the street. "It ran that way."

"Excellent!" the Doctor replies, and legs it in the direction pointed without a moment's hesitation. She had a feeling he would, so she manages to be right on his tail this time and he grabs her hand, grinning madly. The Doctor, Rose, trouble and a chase. It's exhilarating, a moment of old, and she allows herself to think it's back to the sort of normal they have where everything normal is abnormal. Just like before. At least she thinks that until they find the trouble they're pursuing standing in the middle of the street, giving them a hostile glare.

"Ah, so not in fact an alien invasion, but in fact a cow," the Doctor says, his voice falling a bit. "Runaway cow. Right. People would scream if one of them bolted up the street. Naturally."

She can't help it, she has to laugh. And the more wounded he looks, the more she has to laugh, until it's painful gasps for breath and not really laughter at all. She leans against him slightly, and he holds her lightly, and the cow nibbles merrily away on some carefully sculpted hedges.

At least it is feeling comfortable away from its element, creating anarchy in its wake, she reflects.

"This is what humans do, then?" he asks, not really looking at her. "Chase cows and drive everywhere and shag in the backseat and go buy salami when they run out and think about stuff like who'll do the laundry?"

"Yeah. That all right?"

He doesn't really answer, giving the cow a hard look instead. "Think the cow might be a little bit alien?"

"It could be," she replies, giving the cow a look as well. "It has slightly alien ears."

"I thought so too," he says happily. "All right, alien cow, I've seen through your devious hedge plan. Might as well come with me and we'll have a talk to your human about the grass quality so you won't run off again."

The cow seems to take him on his word, or perhaps it is his hand, letting itself be touched and carefully nudged to walk back the way it came. The Doctor keeps talking to it, and Rose follows a little behind, listening.

She's not really sure a cow will have much advice on laundry, actually.

II

It's late in the evening when the Doctor return to her and the car, the worst of the heat gone and the sun feeling more distant. Distance isn't just about the length of space between two points, she reflects. It's also about what means you have to cover it.

Once, they could travel all the way to the sun in seconds. Now it's just a light in the sky, a star she can't point to and ask to see.

She's gotten the Doctor back, but only a part of him, she's beginning to realise. She never had to think about where the TARDIS ended and he began when both came in a package. Now she does.

"Cow all happy," he says as he walks towards her, his coat flapping slightly in a lazy wind and the shadows dancing with. "Got a bit of milk for returning her. I feel like a right breadwinner. Or milkwinner. Is it possible to be troublewinner?"

"With you, anything's possible. Even impossible returns."

He looks at her, bag of milk cartons in his hand, clearly trying to gauge her mood. She's not even sure about it herself, torn between joy, fear and even anger still. She is deliriously happy to see him every second of the day, and she has stopped waking up and having to check he's still there, but in memories, her life with him is perfect. Here, there are issues.

"Why'd you leave the TARDIS?" she challenges. "We could chase real alien cows travelling in it."

"I'm not killing her. You saw what happened when we travelled here by accident and the time vortex was ripped away. I'm not doing that to her," he says tensely, then seems to have an afterthought. "If I brought the TARDIS it wouldn't be really trying this life day-by-day thing, besides."

"You're treating this as some kind of experiment?"

"How else am I going to get the hang of it?"

By actually living it, she wants to scream. By not treating it as a vacation away from the real thing. Oh, she wants to howl it at him, but doesn't. He won't understand, and be hurt, because he really has abandoned so much to be with her here. Even if it's only for a while. He's not really fit for normal life.

She wonders sometimes if he's made her a misfit too.

"Come on, then, milkwinner," she says cheerfully, and ignores everything but the slow-spreading smile across his face. "Let's get out of Hell."

He looks enthusiastic at that.

"Let's get some salami on the way! And bread. Oh, and pickles, I love pickles. Onions! Think they have Norwegian onions?. Maybe even aspargaus. Used to hate it, but I can't remember why, so might be fun to find out. Cheese! Can't do without cheese. Civilizations that do without cheese go all testy and megalomaniac. Might want some jam too." He thinks a bit, tossing the bag into the backseat and getting in beside her. "I might have to make a list."

"That's all right," she tells him, turning the key and listening to the engine kick in, a pale echo of another engine sound she's quite fond of. "Day-by-day living makes for a lot of lists."

They drive away, night falling over Hell as they leave, the day gone and lost.

That's all right. There's another waiting beyond the horizon, and they don't have any means to escape it anymore.

II

"Do you love me?" Rose whispers as he kisses her skin and finds it to be smelling of pine. It's night around them, quiet and light and alien to him, even for all the time he's spent on this Earth and its not identical twin in his Universe. Just a tourist here, and still getting asked the awkward questions.

"I'm here. You have to know that," he replies, the coward every time.

"Do you love me enough?"

He wonders what to answer.

There's the truth, which is never quite what humans want to hear, and there are lies, which always come back to haunt. Sometimes, there's even a choice of what is truth and what's a lie, depending on perspective. Depending on the definition of 'enough'. Always the choice.

Rose looks at him with wide open eyes, so much human love in her face that he feels a little breathless. So little time to love, humans. So little time to understand what it is.

"Do you, Doctor?" she urges, warm breath stroking his cheek as she leans in. Young, kissable Rose, who he is going to have to shag now, and rather does look forward to. Rose, who is convinced she loves him and wonders about how he feels.

He makes his choice.

"Yes," he says, and isn't sure what it is.


	3. Three

An Adventure in Norway  
by Camilla Sandman

Disclaimer: BBC's characters. My words. Norway belongs to itself.

**Three**

II

_Norway _

August and September. Year one.

II

The Doctor dreams.

It's the normal sort of nightmare at first - what he has killed, what he has failed to save and what he doesn't know the difference between all gathered in the place is mind where his quiet. A greater place now, hush eating into him since Gallifrey fell to fire. They rest there, voices of the past, ignored so he won't go mad in the present and be lost to the future. The future needs him. He needs the future.

He doesn't listen, but he does see. Always when he closes his eyes and opens his mind to sleep, they're there. Waiting. Not accusing, because they don't need to. He knows what he has done.

He fears what he has still to do.

This dream isn't like the others. It changes. Something new. A voice, a hum, and he keeps chasing it. It never grows any stronger, but it never dies either. It's just there, like an echo without a source. He knows it would comfort him if only he could make out the words, but they're always too faded. Too much space to cross to retain their meaning.

The TARDIS sings to him in dreams still, but he can't make out the words in its lullaby.

He wakes, Rose's hair in his face and for a moment he feels almost choked. He has to fight an urge to yank himself free and instead just lies very still, adjusting to the sounds and silence. She's breathing steadily, her back to his chest and her face hidden from view. He finds himself wondering what she dreams of and if it has changed at all since she met him.

He rather thinks so.

It is early night, he can tell, a sliver of sunlight from covered windows sneaking its way in. It hasn't set yet, and only a few hours have passed since they settled down. Rose to sleep, him to stay awake, but he seems to be picking up human habits even to the point of sleeping patterns.

Strange how much time those with short lifespans just waste, he thinks. Sleeping, working, looking after cows, searching truth, justice and the human way. And yet... Yet, there's that 'yet', that undefinable 'yet' that makes it seem alluring in a strange way.

He presses a kiss against Rose's neck, brushing her hair away and feeling her body respond even if her mind is lost to all but itself. There's a slight flush in her skin, like a trail after his touches. Must be strange to have a one body for all of your life and never knowing how much changes when you get a new, he considers. Then again, the pain of dying just once is enough for all the lifetimes in the universe.

"What time is it?" Rose murmurs sleepily, stretching slightly and he supposes he should feel guilty for waking her. Seems a human thing.

He doesn't have to be human in ever way, he decides, and just thinks about what they can do when she's awake.

"It's..." he trails off, feeling the flow of time around him, trying to get a feel for it. Strange, this timeline. Humming so loudly, particularly at one point. Same over and over again, like...

He bolts upwards, but tangled in Rose still all he manages to do is to fall spectacularly out of bed with her on top.

"Time to get out of bed ungracefully?" she asks, sounding more amused than annoyed. He doesn't really listen. Not to her. He doesn't know this universe or this time, but he can still feel something is wrong, like a false note in a grand symphony. So very false to his ears and it makes his teeth ache.

Oh yeah. That's trouble.

"Finally!" he grins, and she just laughs a little bewildered at him, hair all messy from sleep, but eyes already shining at him. "It's time for trouble."

"What kind of trouble?" she asks, always with the questions, but he likes that. It reminds him of all the answers he has.

"The best kind," he says truthfully. "The unknown."

II

Rose watches the Doctor drive with only the slightest hint of nervousness. She's grown used to his mad, sudden overtaking of other vehicles, and his disregard for traffic rules when he's in a mood to be a rebel. Which seems to be always.

She's almost sure the car gets propelled by enthusiasm alone and needs no petrol. Almost.

He talks a lot when he drives, too, and this time it's about hearing false notes in grand symphonies and how the Beatles wouldn't have had so many hits if he hadn't helped out and how Edvard Grieg _really_ got inspiration for 'In the Hall of the Mountain King'. ("He couldn't very well have called it 'In the Hall of the Ugly Alien Git', now could he? Properly impressed he was when I took him...") She's not sure why he's talking about music, but she is sure that's not really what he's thinking about.

He's caught a whiff of trouble and adventure and he looks so alive he might very well have been a ghost before. It scares her a little, and thrills her too.

The landscape has grown more barren as they head north, vegetation giving an impression of clinging to stone and Earth only just enough and no more. If a storm comes, she can imagine it all being ripped away. But storms haunt here often enough, and the greenery is not that new, so it must manage somehow.

The mountains go all the way to the sea, the sea crashes into the land without mercy and the Doctor just smiles at it all, knowingly. It makes her wonder, and makes her a little horny too.

She thinks he might smile knowingly at that too, even if he seems to view human sexuality as something downright odd and a curious experiment at the same time, judging by his conduct. He knows so much and is so strangely childlike at the same time she almost wishes she could find out if it was normal for all Time Lords. But she can hardly write an advice column about it, and Sarah Jane is another universe. (Though if Sarah Jane would know or not, Rose isn't sure.) It rather leaves it all to her experience, and she could already write a book.

_Observations on Shagging a Time Lord, by Rose Tyler. Studies in the Wild. _

_Foreplay - Unusual with a touch of blatant disregard for the rules. Often related to trouble and/or running. Can often be as simple as exchanged smiles, and sometimes as complicated as theories on hormonal imbalance caused by time distortions, at least if subject Time Lord is to be believed. Kissing usually involved, as well as other indications of oral fixation. Talkative. Mentions of mothers are at all times advised against as can kill the mood faster than 'a Trafikkaan beast with an appetite and a bottle of ketchup on the ready'. Hair is advised to keep free, as any elaborate hairstyle will get wrecked._

_Act - Energetic. Often talkative. Subject fond of odd positions and strange pauses, as if suddenly listening to something far away. Like to tastes skin and perspiration. Can bite. Gentle at moments, ruthless at others. Predictions pointless, as variations seems tied to mood and mood well hidden behind what subjects want to feel. Size - no particular objections. Skill - yes. Experience - best not dwelt upon. _

_Afterplay - Talkative. Absence of commonly muttered affections in human relationships. Don't hope for them._

Don't.

She looks over at him, and he smiles, passing a car with vigor and caressing a pine tree in the process. Might not be words, but there are actions, and they do say something. It just takes some getting used to being all you get.

"So where is this 'false note', you reckon?" she asks when he takes a breath in a long story of a particular yellow car he was fond of. "You're not leading us on a wild moose chase?"

"I never!" he objects.

"That time on Carkuli?"

"That rock was suspicious!"

"In Australia?"

"That could've been an alien hiding in that crocodile."

"1889, Berlin? You told me I'd see the fall of the wall."

"So I missed by a century. 1989, 1889, just a number apart! And we did run into that plot with the Austrian Crown Prince..."

"How could I forget," she says quietly, and he looks a bit strangely at her. "But returning to the now, as fond as you are of messing about in the past. Where are we going?"

"North."

"There's an awful lot of north in this country."

He grins. "As much north as in a gathering of compasses. Could be around the next bend, could be over the next mountain, could be days ahead."

She looks ahead, road carving its way between mountains and sea, bending into the land again somewhere in the distance. So much north indeed, and the Doctor being vague doesn't exactly bode well. She would think it another wild Time Lord hunch chase if it wasn't for the almost buried tone in his voice and faint shadow in his eyes. She's learning. He's worried.

Definitely trouble.

"I have a good feeling about the next bend," she says brightly. "It looks very sneaky to me."

II

Rose isn't sure where they are when the Doctor stops the car so suddenly she almost hits her head against the dashboard. She opens her mouth to complain and maybe even dare a joke about his sudden stopping in the TARDIS too, but something in his face stops her.

"Here," he says.

"Here?"

She looks around. They stopped at a turn-off to a much smaller gravel road, a sign reading 'Saltfjellet og Saltisen Nasjonalpark'. The landscape looks much the same, mountains and rivers and grass bending in the wind. But in the distance, sun glimmers off ice and snow. Blueish, and she remembers Norway is home of several glaciers where the ice never goes away. Not even in the heat this world has suffered. Old, old ice and snow, thousands of years old. Tens of thousand. Might be anything in there. Maybe even something that'll keep the Doctor interested for more than five minutes.

He follows her gaze and maybe even her thoughts, for his smile widens.

"The ice?"

"The ice," he confirms. "Could be anything!"

That, she thinks, seems even more exciting than following process of narrowing it down. All the possibilities in the world. He likes those. They don't restrict him.

"Looks a bit impossible to get up there," she observes.

"What's a little impossibility before breakfast?" he asks, and his smile even touching his eyes for a moment, clouding the worry that's been there all day.

"Nothing at all."

"Nothing at all," he agrees. "Mind you, always gets my appetite going. I want to try this brown cheese they have here today. On toast."

"Adventurous," she teases, and he yanks the car back into life, turning onto the gravel road with enough energy to kick up dust and clouding them.

"Yes!" he says brightly. "Let's have us another little adventure in Norway."

II

Ice. Ice is cold, the Doctor concludes. Freezing, in fact. Not that this is a revolutionary new discovery, but he still feels it bears repeating. To be thorough and all. That's him. Thorough. Deep. Dedicated. Proper.

On second thought, maybe not. At all.

That sort of thing comes with responsibilities instead of burdens taken willingly and he knows which he prefers.

Rose mutters a little beside him, perhaps something not so nice about Norwegians not allowing cars too far into their national parks. As a result, they've parked the car and trudged their way upwards, the glacier glimmering blue-ishly at them all the while.

And singing, joining the chorus that is time, but so badly out of tune it might as well be a nil point Eurosong entry. From Norway. Something in that ice is loud and disruptive and making the hairs on the back of his manly-haired hand stand up. He's amazed the humans can't tell, but they never listen to time, only dance to its tune deafly.

It's no wonder they step on everyone else's toes, he reflects, and wriggles his toes a little inside his Chucks. Nope, not broken yet.

"It's very quiet," Rose says suddenly, a hush even in her voice. "It's like the ice absorbs the sounds. You can still hear them, so it's not silent, but it's quiet, you know?"

He does. Oh, he does, and he halts her with a hand on her arm, bending his head down to kiss her until all he hears is his breath and hers, mingling.

"Yes," he says, voice low and barely audible even to him. "I know."

It can be quiet in the greatest roar of noise the Universe has ever heard, he knows. It can be quiet when a planet burns, when millions of voices scream in death, when one little ship is hurtling off to die and fails to. So very quiet, surviving. So very quiet that talking endlessly feels like a bit of a rebellion.

"It's too quiet," he says, as a thought, realising the noise he's been following all the way here has died down. "It's gone, I heard it..."

He hears it again. The noise comes back and brings friends as the glacier itself seems to roar and move and come right at them.

"Doctor," Rose says a little urgently, but he just stares, a wall of blue ice staring back. A glacier shouldn't move like that. Old, settled ice and snow shouldn't come like an avalanche of new, impatient snow, eager to thunder through the land. Thousands of years the glacier has been here, and only now it decides to take a walk?

Okay, more like a sprint, to be fair.

"That's not supposed to happen," he says, ever the rebel of sound, silence and time.

The glacier still comes.

II

Cold burns, and he spends a long time trying to figure out how that is possible and comes to the conclusion it isn't. It just feels like it, because his brain is interpreting pain that way. He feels fairly proud at that conclusion until he considers maybe he should in fact do something about being in terrible pain and feeling like it burns.

Oh, right.

He's not sure if he's had his eyes closed or open all along, but the darkness doesn't seem to change either way. So, dark and cold. That's supposed to tell him something, isn't it?

Oh, right. Glacier that took a walk right over him and Rose. He remembers, and quite wishes he hadn't. He can't make much noise in here, and can't hear if Rose does, and all he can feel is ice and snow. No human clothes or flesh. No Rose.

He exhales once, sharply, gets a feel for what direction is up (how humans sometimes fail to is beyond him) and forces his body to press itself in that general direction. The snow around him, hard-packed through the millennia, isn't all too keen on letting him through, but he persists. Pain is just pain. It ends, and death doesn't.

He quite wishes it would end very soon, though. Very, very soon. Right about now would be good.

Ow.

The Universe doesn't always do as he wishes, he remembers. How rude of it.

Now moves forward and he moves up, and finally, finally, he feels a glimmer of light and pushes through. Sunlight greets him, so very bright when bouncing off the snow, and he blinks a little at it. He hears distant voices, drifting on the wind as he crawls up and feels only sky above him and the snow blissfully under him. Air stings his lungs, but he still breathes in as much of it as he can, trying to force oxygen to strengthen his limbs.

Rose. He has to find Rose.

And then there's a noise again, so out of tune, burrowing into him with a strange sort of pain. He has to find it, has to silence it before time in this world goes mad. He can't... He has to find Rose, he has to... Time. Time first. Always time first.

A Time Lord's duty.

He's never liked duties. He left duties, but they didn't leave him.

He crawls froward until he knows it's the place, and he digs down, not minding the snow under his fingernails. Hands will have to do when he has no shovels, and the ice and snow seems to part more easily than it did when going up. Down and down, until it's flesh he finds, and it's Rose, Rose like an ice queen, her skin pale and cold. She feels to weigh the world as he drags her free and up, cradling her in his lap. Still, it's what she holds in her hand, a frozen grip, that makes him truly react.

It's a device that might as well have come from his TARDIS, but isn't. He knows his TARDIS, every last bit of it. This is from somewhere else. This is from this world, and it hums as he reaches for it it.

The noise dies, and returns, no longer disjointed as he touches it as he would his TARDIS, finding the tune and the pace under his fingers. It's been waiting for a long time, giving a signal the only way it knows how.

He knows of only one place where something like this would come from, and he wonders.

"How did you get here, then?" he asks quietly, freeing it from Rose's grasp and carefully putting it inside his coat. It beats alongside his hearts, almost as if it wants to match them. He'll worry about that later.

He worries about Rose now. She is breathing, but she doesn't stir, not even when he brushes snow out of her lashes.Ø

"I did not come here to watch you die," he says harshly, staring at her still form with something like rage. "I came here to watch you live. Do you hear me, Rose? You're going to live and we're going to find out what sort of aliens steal socks from the washing machine and what plans for Universe domination they have with them. You're going to laugh at my sock puppet jokes, and I'm going to laugh with you. You're not going to leave me here alone to face your mother. She'd scare even socks and probably choke me to death with some."

He pauses, rage withdrawing slightly to make room for another emotion in its embrace. "Don't die, Rose. Please. I wouldn't..."

He doesn't know what he wouldn't.

The voices are close now, words distinguishable, but they still feel distant in his mind as he lowers his head a little, feeling so heavy he wonders how the snow carries him at all.

Someone talks to him, touches him, but he only looks up when the words change to English.

"Sir? Is this your wife?"

"It's Rose," he replies, not quite minding what he says. "I'm the Doctor. This is your glacier, I'm sure you've met. It just introduced itself to me. Forceful handshake."

"I think he's hit his head a little," the man says, and the Doctor just laughs, because it's not funny at all. He can still feel the device in his mind, forcefully jubilant, jubilant enough to move a glacier and much more besides. Two words echo with it, etching into his mind.

_Time Lord._

It's funny, except not, but he never expected to be recognised here.

II

"Rose," voices keep urging, and Rose tries to understand what they're urging for. She doesn't know most of them, but sometimes, she thinks she hears the Doctor and she likes that. Sometimes, she thinks she hears her mother, and she's not sure about that at all.

"I had to be called by strangers to find out my daughter was in hospital in Tromsø!" her mother rages. "And what's this about you being her husband? You don't even have a last name to give her! Didn't even invite me to the wedding - what was the terrible rush? Oh my God, she's up the duff!"

"No," the Doctor says evenly, and Rose struggles to see his face, but her eyelids are much too heavy and remain down.

"Are you going to..."

"No. That child would have to endure far too much silence."

Silence comes and silence goes, and Rose knows time passes while she fades in and out of awareness. She hears Norwegian voices too, friendly and trained and with a hint of professional care, and it rather confirms she must be in a hospital. She remembers pain and cold, and clutching onto something in the snow made of metal, but the world didn't stop moving.

"You break your mother's heart," Pete says, and he sounds sad. "Don't. I love her heart."

She thinks of the Doctor and understands, and maybe even Pete understands her. She knows his hand on hers is gentle, and that is enough.

"Dad," she says, and sleeps again. There are no dreams, only confused sounds and the smell of clean linen. Sometimes, she thinks she feels needles, but perhaps the sharp pain in her skin is something else entirely. Her mind feels clearer each time she wakes, and finally she does manage to open her eyes to see the Doctor sitting in a chair, feet o her bed.

"Hi!" he says brightly, even giving her a little wave. If not for the shadow in his eyes, she might think he hadn't worried about her at all. "Your mother wants me to get a career so I can take care of you."

She has to laugh. "Maybe you should get a career so you can take care of yourself."

He considers it, taping a finger thoughtfully against his chin. "No. Takes all the fun out of being careless."

This is a new life, she almost wants to tell him. It doesn't come with the TARDIS failsafe. Sometimes, it needs care.

"Is mum here, raving about us being married?" she asks instead, and he winces a little. "I thought I heard."

"Your Norwegian friend told her you were here. Remember to thank him," he replies cheerfully. "Or thank the glacier that decided thousands of years was quite long enough to be stuck in the same place. Gave you a proper beating, it did, but the doctors here aren't totally useless and you'll be fine."

He thinks a bit, then adds as an afterthought, "So will I, by the way."

She eyes him, pushing herself up on her elbows. "Doctor... ØYou proposed to me, and now you're introducing yourself to people as my husband. Didn't we skip a part? Like the wedding?"

"Don't tell your mother that," he says after a moment of complete stillness, putting his feet down back on the floor. "She'll make us have one."

She opens her mouth to make a comment, but he leans forward and kisses her instead, his tongue warm inside her dry mouth. Without missing a beat, he withdraws long enough to lift a glass of water to her lips, and kisses her again the moment she swallows.

It feels more an alien kiss than it usually does, she reflects.

"I'll tell Jackie and Pete you're awake," he says finally, straightening up. "Your mum's a bit upset. Best just to nod along when she tells you what a horrible person you are. Or maybe that's just me."

"Doctor!" she calls, and he pauses at the door, not quite looking at her. "There was something in the snow."

"I know. You held on to it. I found it when I found you."

"What was it?"

"The impossible," he replies after a heartbeat, and leaves.

She's not sure it's a good sort of impossible this time.

II

Her mother doesn't quite call her horrible, Rose finds, but she does get a long lecture on how to answer and make calls. Enough to make her feel a little guilty, but she has had a year with her mother without the Doctor, so is it wrong to want a few months just with him?

She tries to explain, but feels tired instead, and just lets the words wash over her until they leave, her mother with a hug, Pete with a look.

Afterwards, she hears her mother cry in the hallway and Pete's whispered words, not really helping at all, but trying, always trying.

She sleeps a little again, and dreams of wolves and time, one devouring the other. She dreams of the Doctor, a wolf's grin on his lips, time in his eyes and her in his embrace, and wakes to find him sleeping in her bed, an arm around her waist. He looks almost innocent and boyish with his eyes closed and face relaxed, but she knows a little of what lurks behind it.

"What big eyes you have," she mutters, touching his eyelids carefully. "What big ears you used to have."

"Don't start on my teeth," he mutters back, smiling enough that she can see them. She presses herself closer to him, and can feel something hard in a front pocket press pack. Probably whatever she held onto in the roar of snow and he's holding onto now. He can tell she's feeling it too, shifting away a little. "Don't ask."

"Not yet," she agrees.

He's going to tell her of his own free will and motivation, she decides. She'll make him.

"Rose," he says very evenly, putting a hand on her breast so casually it might not be an intimate act at all. "I came here for sixty years with you. Almost dying not even one year in is bad form."

"I could say the same to you!" she flings back, remembering how she first saw him in this world. "Besides, what are you suggesting? The next time I see a glacier impossibly come at me, I duck?"

"I'm a great fan of ducking," he says seriously, pressing a kiss against her forehead. "There won't be a next time."

Of course there will be, she knows. He can't live a normal life any more than she can regenerate. There will be a next and a time after that and a time after that, and hundreds thereafter, because he's the Doctor and trouble will find him even when he doesn't look for it.

She has learned that, at least. He wouldn't be the Doctor if he didn't get hit by a glacier occasionally.

"I love you," she says instead of protesting, and takes advantage of his momentary inability to formulate a reply by kissing him. His lips meet hers eagerly enough, and his hand lingers on her breast as she swings herself on top of him.

"Are you going to shag me, Rose Tyler?" he asks, looking up at her what must be affection in his eyes.

"Was planning to."

"Good plan. We'll go with that."

They do. Rose Tyler and the Doctor, skin and sweat and shagging in a silence only broken when one of them - she's not even sure who - makes a noise that might be a sigh and might be even a surrender.

To what terms remains to be seen.

II

Tromsø is bathed in autumn sunset below him when the Doctor hears footsteps and knows he's about to have company on the rooftop. It's not Rose, because Rose is still sleeping and healing, and he doesn't think it's Jackie, because she'd be hurling abuse at him already.

"I don't think you're actually allowed up here," Pete says, and the Doctor turns to see what isn't quite Rose's father, but still is the love of Jackie's life. The Universe seems fond of those sort of ironies.

"Sonic screwdriver," he replies, waving it a little. "My permission. You?"

"Money," Pete says softly. "My permission."

"I prefer mine."

"I think I do too," Pete admits after a moment, looking down at the city below them. "I'm not going to apologise for Jackie. She has a right to be upset that you've just swanned back into Rose's life again."

"More fell than swanned," the Doctor corrects. "Rose makes her own choices. I'm not going to apologise for them."

"But you are sorry. You seem like that sort of a guy," Pete says softly, then seems to catch himself. "That sort of alien. Jackie wants me to slap you."

"Are you going to?"

"I'm thinking."

They stand in silence for a while, the sun performing the illusion of sinking behind a mountain. It's really the Earth that moves, the Doctor knows, the horizon moving and the sky not. Only a planet spinning so fast it can leave anyone dizzy would think the Universe moved and it stood still.

"I need your help," he says suddenly, and Pete looks up sharply. "I need to know if I'm the only one in this Universe."

"The only one what?"

"Time Lord," he says quietly. "I need to know if I'm the only Time Lord in this Universe."

In his pocket, the device hums almost happily, and he wonders; wonders while the planet spins the city into night and darkness and the sky remains quiet and still and might hide anything.


	4. Four

An Adventure in Norway  
by Camilla Sandman

Disclaimer: BBC's characters. My words. Norway belongs to itself.

Author's Note: Thanks to Wendy for beta.

II

**Four**

_Norway. _

October. Year one.

Normal life as a scientific exploration - all the discoveries seem small, a map of details becoming a strange larger picture.

The Doctor is discovering he likes to shag Rose in certain kinds of lighting.

Green neon light of a garage somewhere in Tromsø, having sneaked out of the hospital, Rose trapped between the wall and him, a leg lifted (to keep weight off her injured ankle) and another trying to keep her balance as he fucks her a little savagely. If he lowers his eyelids, all he can see is the light flickering across her face and they could be anywhere at all with green-flickering light.

He wonders if it's the sort of delusions humans are so good at, and notices Rose keeps her eyes only half open herself. At least until she closes them all the way and her nails are sharp against his skin, leaving marks. He doesn't mind, particularly not when they climb up on the roof, watching life below, and she kisses all the marks she's left save one.

It's autumn, scarves appearing and grass disappearing. Leaves turning colour, soon to fall. Green to brown and orange and red and gold. Like humans, living their season, slowly draining of life until what is left is simply swept away by a northern wind. Come spring, come new leaves to rustle in the summer breeze.

"What are you thinking?" Rose says quietly, her hands in his coat-pockets, seeking warmth.

"About winds," he says truthfully, and tells her about barometric pressure and uneven heating of polar caps and the spin of the planet, all the greater causes for the simple movement of air. She listens, and the sun on her face makes her almost look golden.

Afterwards, he sneaks her back in again, because she still has recovering to do and Jackie will probably have more than his head otherwise. That he has some poking around to do on his own, that he can pretend is secondary, hardly mattering at all.

He's picking up certain human habits very well, he considers. Getting the hang of the little details.

"Don't get lost," Rose whispers against his lips as he kisses her, and he knows humans are quite good at spotting delusions, too.

II

Sometimes, Rose isn't sure she knows her mum at all. Jackie Tyler - for all her talkative ways and open face, there remains a look in her eyes Rose can't quite grasp. Maybe it's experience. Maybe it's just age. Maybe it's just sunlight being reflected and maybe she's just imagining it. Rose feels she is good at that, after all.

It's a sunny day outside, and a white day inside, all very sterile and hospital. She's longing to get away, but she doesn't really have a home in this town and she's not going anywhere too far while the Doctor is out there, poking about. Not that she thinks he would leave her. It's just that she fears he would.

"Just because you feel like you need him doesn't mean he's good for you," Jackie says, eyes dark, picking up a conversation Rose was hoping had died three days prior.

"Not again," Rose says to the ceiling, and the ceiling just gleams at her, offering little escape. Jackie seems to catch the hint nevertheless, softening her tone a little.

"Sweetheart... I just want you to be happy."

"Mum... I'm... You love Dad, right?" Rose asks, and Jackie crosses her arms in a way that means war.

"That's not the same thing!"

"How is it not the same?" Rose asks, exasperated even to her own ears.

"Because your father isn't an alien! In any universe! Don't think I haven't checked!"

"Thanks, Jackie," Pete says from the door, and the way he looks at her mother makes Rose look away.

"She doesn't listen," Jackie says, sounding tired and old.

"Must run in the family. Neither do you," he says lightly, and gives Rose a smile. "Come on. Let's get out of here."

II

Pete takes them to a quiet little street on the mainland, the bridge over to the city centre on the island still visible among trees and zeppelins. It's a wooden house, as most Norwegian houses seem to be, slightly weathered by wind and rain. Not surprisingly, as it's rainy and windy even now.

"Have you gone bankrupt on another wild scheme and we're moving here to avoid debt?" Jackie asks, something like resignation in her voice.

"No! My schemes never fail," Pete protests and Jackie looks a little doubtful. "Trust me on this!"

They get into a little argument that seems more fond than really vicious, and Rose just lets the words drift with the wind, closing her eyes to feel rain on her face. It feels somehow different to English rain, or perhaps it's her that is different since then. Wet tends to be wet, after all.

She feels tired and aching, her left ankle and right wrist pounding a little with a dull sort of pain mostly just reminding her she's been mean to her body. Or rather, a glacier has been. It probably doesn't even feel guilty about it.

She only opens her eyes when she hears her name, and sees they're both looking at her.

"What?"

"It's yours," Pete says quietly. "Just yours. Twenty years of birthdays Pete Tyler owes you."

Her first absurd thought is that it's probably the most useless gift she's ever got. The Doctor, staying in one place? "But why would..."

She pauses, noting the look in Pete's eyes. "You know something I don't."

"Yes," he says and looks absurdly torn between guilt and pride.

"You what?" says Jackie, but Rose doesn't listen, just looks at Pete. Not her dad, but her dad still, whatever this Universe might say.

"Thanks," she says.

II

Svartisen means "black ice", the Doctor learns, picking up Norwegian on a day he feels bored, watching the people Pete more or less has paid for slowly poke through the glacier at a pretend scientific mission. They are in fact doing useful measurements for calculating when it might move again and at what speed, but most importantly, they're looking for anything that shouldn't really be there.

Like the piece in his pocket, humming still.

Maybe a piece of a TARDIS. And, if a TARDIS is here, Time Lords are not far behind.

He's not sure how he feels about that, so he feels nothing at all, learning instead. He's almost forgotten what it feels like to have a Universe he doesn't really know. Not this version of it. Anything could be out there. Anything he can't travel to, unless, unless...

It worries him a bit that he's starting to forget why he came here. For Rose, yes, but he knows he can have Rose any way he likes, as selfish and cruel as it sounds. He tries not to think about it. He tries to think of why something as white as a glacier might be named black ice instead, constructing many fanciful theories and some quite inane.

Maybe it was named by someone colour-blind. Maybe it was so white it made everything else seem black. Maybe it had a black sense of humour. Maybe aliens from a distant planet painted it black to remember where they'd parked their space ship. Maybe it's a joke.

The fifth night, he dreams it's because it was once dark with ashes, the burning finally over. He wakes to a pounding headache, the device burning in his hand, and knowing where to look.

The sixth day, they find the second piece. On the seventh, the third and the fourth, and the ashes still clinging to them, black frozen in white.

He knows where the name came from now.

II

It's month before he's satisfied they've found all they can, a thousand pieces of varying size, all familiar and not. He is sure now. A TARDIS crashed to this planet, burning and broken. He's not sure if it's still alive or if he feels just the ghost of it, but he's already feeling like a Doctor, trying to nurse something back to life. Battered and broken and almost all quiet, it doesn't matter. He has to try to rebuild it.

And maybe someone will come looking for it and maybe this universe isn't silent, even if he can't hear the roar. Can't hear the Time Vortex. Maybe it just sings to a different tune than he's used to. Maybe it's just a problem of translation, as it were. Maybe that's why his own TARDIS died here and would die again, should he bring it.

No TARDIS should ever have to die violently.

They still do, and he wonders why this one did. Wonders if history repeats itself and echoes into other worlds, if Gallifrey died in this world too. If that is why it is silent, after all. Rocks and dust and echoes, perhaps.

That's all right, really. He's used to being alone. He really is. He was alone while Gallifrey lived too, but at least then he could pretend he wasn't, for a little time.

He misses Rose, he realises, and decides it's time to go back.

Pretences go on.

II

The Doctor comes waltzing into her kitchen as if he's always lived there, picking up her toast and biting into it with relish. She just stares at him, and he sits down, lifting a foot to rest on an empty chair.

"Morning!" he says brightly. "We need to get some jam."

"Morning," she replies, a little dazed. "How did you know..."

"Oh, Pete," he says breezily. "Gave me a key and everything."

"And you're okay with...?"

"What? The house? Well, it could do with some paint. Blue is good. Not enough blue in the world, if you ask me."

She stares at him, trying to will herself to read his mind, but all she can hear is the wind tapping on the window. She gives up when her eyes begin to water.

"I didn't think you were all that keen on house ideas."

"No mortgage with this one," he counters, and might even be sincere as explanations go, though she doubts it. "Need a place to tinker. Pete said it had an excellent basement. The neighbours won't even hear it if I accidentally reverse the time field."

"Are you planning on it?"

"No, but I could get lucky. Quite a rush. Much like inhaling helium while doing LSD in zero gravity."

She can't help but smile, but does manage a somewhat stern tone. "You haven't even asked me if you can move in."

"Questions are so burdensome when you already know the answers."

"And you know the answer to this one?"

"Yes," he says, and kisses her, toast still in his mouth. She tastes something else in his mouth too, and wonders where the heck he got ice cream so early in the morning. A month apart, and he goes to get ice cream before seeing her again. She should really be quite insulted. At arrogance and ice cream both.

The latter does taste sweet on his tongue, though, and the former, he's always had. He just pretends otherwise.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" she asks, pulling away slightly, adjusting his tie.

"No. Yes. Maybe." He stares at her and seems to be looking into something else entirely at the same time. Time itself, perhaps. "I don't know what I'm looking for."

"Ice cream?" she suggests and his eyes focuses on her again.

"Ice cream," he agrees. "Do you think they have any blue flavours?"

II

The Doctor moves into the basement with boxes and boxes of stuff that smells rotten and vaguely burnt, but she doesn't ask, not yet. Too many clouds across his face. He usually looks like all the sunshine in the world when he actually has things figured out. Even if it's bad news, he still delights in knowing and understanding.

She still likes that in him, the first thing he rather wooed her with, prattling on about aliens and plastic such a long time ago. Different her, different him, different Universe.

Still holding hands across.

He doesn't move into her bedroom, but grabs another room instead, and she feels vaguely rejected. At least until she wakes up at four in the morning from him sweeping into her room, skin smelling of wet wood and sharp chemicals, pressing her down in the mattress as he kisses her. Not her idea of an ideal shag-time, but his fingers are warm and nimble and her cheeks feel increasingly warm as strokes and pets continue. She can't read his face as he looks at her, can only guess he lowers his eyelids because he enjoys it too or at least enjoys something about her.

When he flips her over, she closes her eyes, feeling her pillow cold against her cheek and his chin warm against her shoulder. The weight of him feels less heavy than she imagined and she thinks she might be able to carry him. If she'd ever need to.

"Rose," he says, a whisper by her ear, hard inside her and heavy on top of her, a hand finding hers as he tenses. "Åh helvete svarte faen..."

An alien with weird habits, weird shag-time, a mysterious project in her basement and who curses in a different language each time he comes. Some normal life that is, she thinks, and does a little cursing of her own. In English. Mostly.

Afterwards, he lies next to her, mirroring her pose, looking at her so intently it almost makes up for the absentmindedness the rest of the time.

"How do I do at human?" he asks.

"Badly."

He looks positively affronted. "You're born human! You have no idea how hard it is."

Yeah, I do, she wants to say. Yeah, I do. Can't dance with time and Time Lords and remain fully human. Resonance. It doesn't just go one way.

He notices something in her face, but doesn't say what, just changes the tone slightly. "So, Rose Tyler, Human Integration Expert, how do I do better?"

"For starters, you need to get a job," she replies, and he looks horrified, clutching the sonic screwdriver almost protectively. (Why does he bring that to bed anyway? She decides she better not ask.)

"Time Lord is a full-time job."

"Being human is, too," she counters. "We still have time for careers."

II

ØCareers, there's the thing. Humans have careers. Sure, he could say he's had a great career in Universe Saving and General Mischief, but he can't seem to find any vacancies when he goes by the local employment office.

He considers being a doctor just for the amusing gags he can make to Rose about being Doctor the doctor, but human biology just feels too depressing. They die much too easily, humans. Like flies, and the Universe has plenty of pesticide.

Teaching, there's a possibility. He's already tried it, and there's always the hope that he'll find some devious alien plot at work while at it. He is qualified enough, given his obviously superior knowledge and general good human skills (he's not sure why Rose laughs a lot when he mentions that particular skill, though).

He considers journalism briefly, but thinks of Sarah Jane and then doesn't think of it any more.

In the end, he decides a weatherman is the thing to be.

II

"I got a job as a weatherman," he announces to Rose in the middle of her physical therapy and she looks so surprised she falls off the ball-thing she's using to regain strength in her injured ankle.

"You what?" she says, getting up, cursing a little. (In Norwegian, he notes. Must've picked it up from him.)

"I weatherman," he replies, smiling proudly. "Well, 'I weatherman' very soon, that is. Went to the local news broadcaster and showed my credentials..."

"Your slightly physic paper, you mean," she interrupts, but he ignores it.

"...and they said I had a very 'unique style of relaying information'."

"In other words, they thought you were bonkers."

"Yep!"

"But...?"

"But I predicted the weather correctly for the next few weeks. They were very impressed when I told them it would start snowing at exactly a quarter past seven this evening. Particularly since they weren't expecting snow until next week."

He follows her gaze as she looks out the window, where the first snowflakes are quietly drifting into the window and sliding down. Then she looks at the time, and she shakes her head at him a little.

Quarter past nine. He's always been on time, after all.

"I'll be hired tomorrow," he predicts, and she walks up to him, hardly limping at all.

"You're really trying," she says, voice a little strange. "You're living here, getting a job, inventing ice cream flavours, really trying for normal as you understand it..."

He thinks of the boxes in the basement and feels a moment of guilt, but it fades as she plants herself on his lap. 

"You're really trying," she repeats, leaning her face against his chest and he's not sure if she's happy for the effort or sad because all he can do is try.

"Rose?" he asks.

"Weatherman," she replies, and after a moment, they both laugh, a touch hysterically, but laughter still. They haven't laughed enough of late, he decides, and lures her out to throw loose snow at her and watch flakes melt in her hair.

In the morning, he gets the job, and buys a scarf with part of the advance. He'll need it for the winter. Or at least, humans do, so he can pretend he does as well.

He gets Rose one too. Blue, of course. It really is an underestimated colour.

II

Rose dreams of wolves and ashes, falling like snow until all is covered. The wolves hunt, shadows at first, but shadows taking form. Shadows becoming the Doctor, ashes in his hair and no TARDIS to flee to. Not here. Only her here. Only Rose.

Only Rose will have to do. 

She wakes with a pounding headache and her skin tingling and, somewhere in the part of her that remembers the TARDIS, she knows she's been given a warning.

The Doctor isn't the only one to love enough to cross time and space and void to give a message, perhaps.

II

Tromsø is covered in white after three days of straight snow, and the city feels almost quiet as she walks through it, blue scarf tucked around her head and neck. (It's so long it's the only way to keep her from tripping on it, really.) Even the zeppelins seem to be less noisy than usual, but on the downside, snow falls off them as they move and falls down unsuspecting people's necks. Rose have had two incidents already, but tries not to feel too annoyed. After, her father now owns one too. At her mum's insistence, to better be able to travel to see Rose whenever.

It feels a bit like moving away from home for the first time. She never really moved out of the estate even when she was living in the TARDIS, but she has this time. She and the Doctor, shacking up. Except she often hardly sees him for all the time he spends in the basement and now soon at work.

She still has no idea how he intends to manage a steady job, even if it is only three times a week.

Now for her work...

"Mickey!" she calls delightedly as she finally spots him, and he turns, already grinning. She doesn't care she looks a bit idiotic as she throws herself into his arms.

"I had to come when I heard," he says, a little breathlessly. He hasn't shaved, she notices, and wonders who he's trying to look butch for.

"He came just for me, Mickey," she babbles, but he shakes his head.

"Not that. I knew you'd found him the moment your mum called and said you'd gone missing in Norway. Only him would make you do that."

She can feel her face burning a little, but Mickey doesn't seem to notice, plowing on.

"Torchwood, Rose. There's someone at Torchwood who knows about the Doctor besides me, Jake and Pete. I saw a mention on a memo I shouldn't have seen. They may want to use him."

"How did..." she starts, her lips feeling stiff. "Did someone tell..."

"Jake would never tell anyone," he says harshly, then softens a little. "You might be safe here. You got friends in Norway, right?"

"Yeah. I helped them," she mutters, mind racing. No one's going to chase her Doctor. No one. Petter will help her. He owes her that. "Thanks, Mickey."

He shrugs a little modestly. "Jake and I will see what we can do when we get back to London."

"Jake's here with you?"

"Yes," he says, saying nothing more, but she still hears all too well.

It begins to snow again.

II

It's snowing when the Doctor walks home, feeling just a tad proud. First day at work and he was only threatened with being fired twice. And even that stopped when he predicted where tornadoes would touch ground in Russia (quite a tornado-plagued country in this world, apparently). Tornadoes are _easy_. Why humans are so appalling bad at predicting them, he has no idea. Then again, they even get temperature predictions wrong.

It's a wonder human weathermen aren't chased away after the first sudden rainfall, really.

There's a person standing outside his house, he notices as he walks closer, and then his head feels like it's been hit by a glacier at the realisation. A woman. Not Rose. He'd know Rose anywhere. He'd know...

She turns, hair golden even without the sun to shine on it, the snow falling around her like leaves, face familiar and eyes not. The picture clicks into place. He knows her, but doesn't know the life she's lived and doesn't know why the stars in her eyes are dead.

He'd know her anywhere.

"Romana," he says.


End file.
